What’s the difference between ice and snow? Aren’t they both frozen water?
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Have you ever gotten a bowl of ice cream, let it melt (on accident or on purpose), and then tried to freeze it again? Instead of turning back into ice cream, it freezes into a hard block.
This is because when ice cream is made it is constantly being stirred, letting air be captured in the freezing cream and forcing smaller crystals to form. These two things don’t happen to a bowl of cream that is just set in the freezer, so the bowl freezes without any extra air and into fewer, larger, stronger crystals.
Snow is like ice cream; while it was freezing, it was being stirred by the moving air in a cloud. There’s air captured inside it, and the ice crystals are smaller, weaker, softer, and more numerous. Sure, it’s still ice crystals, but the shape of those crystals are different enough to change so much about it.
Meanwhile, “ice” is usually the larger crystals without air inside of them. So they have all the properties of ice, but none of captured air or small crystals.
(you could also compare sand to sandstone; smaller things of a big thing have different material properties)
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